Many techniques have been proposed to protect financial documents such as checks and money orders from having the amount raised by alteration. Safety papers have been developed which have chemically reactive coatings which can change color or bleach out a color and reveal words such as "VOID" to show that an attempt has been made to alter the document. Printing techniques have also been used on the back of documents using an ordered large repeating pattern any change in which should be quickly detected by the human eye.
In order to frustrate the above mentioned protection techniques, persons interested in altering a check or money order have developed a cut and paste scheme. In the cut and paste method of alteration a person would go to a bank, store or post office and get two money orders. One money order could be for $9.00 and the second for $100.00. Using a scalpel the person would carefully remove the 9 from the first money order and the 1 from the second. The 9 would then be pasted into the area where the 1 had been removed thereby raising the money order to $900.00. On presenting the money order for cashing, the paper stock would appear as usual thereby not alerting the clerk that an alteration had been made.